Wow - what a great movie!! That should be all you need to know but for the more discerning of you, please read on...
Lau Ching-Wan is one of my favourite Hong Kong actors and movies like
this show us why. Highly talented and
highly versatile, he adds a touch of class to any movie. Nicholas Tse, on the other hand, is not quite
up there in my books but he definitely gets an A for effort. Put the two together and you have something
greater than the sum of their parts – director Law Chi-Leung’s The Bullet
Vanishes.
Set in 1930s China, Song Donglu (Lau Ching-Wan) is a prison police
officer with a difference. He enjoys
hearing the stories of the prisoners and uses his brilliant mind to free
numerous wrongly convicted prisoners.
This of course soon catches the attention of his superiors and promotion
to detective status rapidly ensues.
Deployed to a town with a fresh murder to solve, Donglu joins forces
with local cop Guo Zhui (Nicholas Tse).
The two team up to try and solve the riddle of the vanishing
bullets. Each of the victims appear to
have been shot but the bullets cannot be found at the crime scenes or in the
bodies. Factory workers soon start to
suspect supernatural causes and fear that it is a curse coming true. Donglu knows otherwise and uses, for the
time, cutting edge forensics methodology to try and crack the case. Think CSI in 1930s China.
Fearful of corruption and ulterior motives within the local police,
Donglu and Zhui join forces with a rookie-cop to try and get to the bottom of
things, not without a little help from a street informant (Mini Yang) and the police
departments coroner (Yumiko Cheng). The
chemistry between the three cops really sells this and makes us want to follow
their findings as they unravel the mystery.
It’s beautiful watching the logic unfold as they explain and decrypt
the different crime scenes. Comparisons
with Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes are inevitable, especially as a certain
explosion scene is a straight rip-off of a scene out of the first Holmes
movie. However, such comparisons really
don’t do justice to either movie.
Besides having two uber-smart detectives in olden times solving crimes,
this bears little resemblance to the Holmes movies and characters. Arguably, this is a better movie.
In addition to the razor sharp logic and detective work, we also have
some expertly crafted actions sequences.
Put it all together and you have a pretty great movie.
Is this a perfect movie?
No. I’m sure many will be left
disappointed by the ending as I was. Not
disappointed because it was an anti-climax but rather because it’s, perhaps,
not as formulaic as sometimes movies can be and we often want them to be. The ending left me thinking for quite some
time and part of me wishes that it was different. The fact that I’m still thinking about it is
testament to how good this movie is. My
only regret is not having seen it on the big screen when it was released last
year.
Highly recommended!! Get it on Blu-ray or DVD!
Rating 4.5 out of 5.
Bobby
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